Providing assistance to a person who has fallen overboard a boat or a kayaker who has exited from their kayak and is currently swimming in a rapid can be critical in terms of the timeliness and type of assistance provided. Rescuing of individuals partaking in marine and other water based sports can be of a difficult nature with regard to accurate delivery of suitable equipment to facilitate aid to, and retrieval of, a person from the water.
A device conventionally utilized in rescuing a person, e.g., a swimmer, or the like, from a body of water, such as a lake, river, ocean, and the like, is a life-ring buoy (LRB). Traditionally the LRB comprises floatable material having a torus shape (e.g., a doughnut shape). During rescue, the swimmer can hang on to the LRB or position the LRB around their torso (e.g., under their arms) to provide flotation during retrieval of themselves from the body of water. A LRB is typically constructed from a unicellular polyurethane foam (for buoyancy) covered in a durable skin such as polyvinyl chloride, hardshell polyethylene, or the like. Alternatively the LRB can be of a hollow construction where the outer shell is of a rigid material, e.g., a hardshell polyethylene skin. Conventional LRB's, comprising of a hard outer skin, have the potential to be injurious to the person requiring rescue if they are hit by the LRB as it is being thrown to them, e.g., during delivery of the LRB.
Hollow LRBs with a vinyl outerskin are commonplace in environments such as a swimming pool but their lightweight and general lack of sufficient rigidity can render throwing such a LRB to be an inaccurate process with the possibility that the LRB is unable to provide sufficient buoyancy to provide necessary floatation to the person in the water requiring assistance.
Other items can be carried on board a boat such as seat pads which when not being used to provide seating can also be thrown to a swimmer to provide floatation. However, given their fairly non-aerodynamic shape, it can be quite a challenge to accurately deliver a seat pad to a person in the water.
Personal floatation devices (PFD's), lifevests, lifejackets, and the like, are often worn by people when there is a chance of falling into a body of water such as when working near unguarded edges, boarding or leaving small boats, etc. Kayakers, canoeists, rafters, and the like, while not mandated to, will typically wear a PFD to provide extra buoyancy in the event that they are no longer in their kayak/canoe/raft/etc., e.g., as a result of falling out or performing a wet exit. However, even though, for example, a kayaker may have been sufficiently careful to wear a PFD, the river conditions in which they find themselves, e.g., a class V whitewater rapid, could place them in extreme danger of drowning and accurate delivery of some means of floatation and/or rescue is critical to their survival. A device commonly found in such conditions is a throwbag.
A throwbag comprises of a nylon bag which incorporates floatation material and a rope loosely stuffed inside. One end of the rope is typically looped to form a grab loop. A person conducting the rescue will hold onto the grab loop and throw to the swimmer the throwbag containing the remainder of the rope. As the throwbag travels through the air, the remaining rope pays out from the bag. Upon delivery to the swimmer, the swimmer grabs the bag/rope and/or wraps the rope around themselves to enable the person conducting the rescue to pull the swimmer to shore, for example. One concern during the rescue is the swimmer is to grab the rope rather than the bag containing the remaining uncoiled rope. In the latter scenario the rope could continue to uncoil from the bag thereby rendering the “tether” between the rescuer and the swimmer to be ineffective as the swimmer continues to be swept downstream.